Tuesday, 1 February 2011

Welcome to everyone who signed up for the Speculative Fiction Reading Challenge!

This is post where you can link up your reviews posted on your blogs in February 2011 to be in with a chance of winning the second prize pack.

The prize pack this month consists of two ENORMOUS books! I am giving away copies of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson and Heroes by Joe Abercrombie!

All of the reviews you post to Mr Linky below will equate to an entry into the prize draw.

Below is the link widget. Please make sure that your link goes directly to your review and not to your main homepage. Thanks! (This is not the post to use to sign up for the challenge. If you want to do that, please go HERE.)

Good luck to you all, and I look forward to seeing your reviews for February!

35 comments:

I won't be continuing with this Challenge because I don't like the attempted re-branding of Science Fiction as Speculative Fiction. I have loved Science Fiction & Fantasy for years in all it's guises, and the Speculative Fiction title just whiffs to me Marketing Bull to make it more acceptable to people who look at the Genre, and won't read it because all they see is aliens, elves and maps in the front of the book. The Speculative Fiction title irritates me because it reeks of spin and dishonesty. I was initially willing to put that aside, because I thought I was being over sensitive, but as the month has gone on it's niggled at me, and even the chance at some very cool prizes won't change my mind.

Isn't that being a little silly, abandoning a challenge just because you don't like the nomenclature being used as a category? Whatever it's called, the literature itself remains unchanged - I see the term 'speculative' less of a rebranding and more as a term of inclusion for all types of genre fiction - it's just like in music, where there are numerous subcatogories of this and that, but ultimately it's meaningless as I just consider it good music. It just seems a mite churlish to quit purely on that basis...

I don't like that they renamed Marathon bars to Snickers. Sounds like a joke about a lady's undergarments! But you know what, they still taste the same (the chocolate bar that is, not the undergarments - that would just be weird!), and I enjoy them for their taste not the silly name.

Speculative Fiction isn't even a silly name. It's a term that's been around for years. Surely the important thing is the idea behind the challenge?

Isn't Speculative Fiction an easier umbrella term to use nowadays with all the sub-genres, sub-sub-genres and crossovers? Sometimes I get completely confused by all the terms and I like having a simple one-name-catches-all phrase.

"Speculative fiction for me includes anything from the realm of science fiction, fantasy or horror - doesn't matter what subgenre, or whether it is tie-in fiction. I'm aiming to make this as inclusive as possible."

Speculative Fiction was indeed invented to be used instead of Science Fiction, but I have not seen it used as that since I started reading Science Fiction and Fantasy magazines in the 1990s.

@Ruacach I can understand the sentimentality towards the old SFF branding. Under the guise of SFF I was introduced to a multitude of amazing books that became life time companions.

But I also understand that the genre is always evolving, changing in new and exciting ways. The term has become too limiting for the current generation of fiction. Some of the newer books no longer comfortably fall into the categories of Sci-Fi or Fantasy. Many people have begun to include horror into the sections as well, especially horror that contain supernatural elements.

For a time people tried using the term Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror to describe it, but that was just too clunky. We needed a new name for it. Genres such as Steampunk and Post Apocalyptic Fiction felt left out, because it was not wholly Fantasy, nor wholly Science Fiction. With many titles the lines between genres had become blurred and it confused people.

Say for instance you have a novel that is described as post-apocalyptic steampunk with elements of biopunk and magical realism. Where would you put it? Is it Science Fiction? Is it Fantasy? Neither? Both?

The term Speculative Fiction was thus not implemented because of "spin and dishonesty", no, but because we needed a new name to call something that outgrew simple "Science Fiction and Fantasy".

Given that the term "speculative fiction" predates steampunk, biopunk, urban fantasy, etc.., I very much doubt it was invented as an umbrella term for them. It was coined by Heinlein because he felt it had more prestige than science fiction.

When you examine a book like China Miéville's recent The City & The City, it is hard to say exactly what category it would fit in - without a broad enough catchment area like Speculative Fiction. Is it a crime novel? Is it SF? Or neither really - straying into the nebulous borderlands of gasp, literary fiction? A lot of toes seemed to have been stepped on when it was called SF.

Speculative Fiction sounds right to me, for it both encompasses the diversity of such a book's influences and gives a nod to an author's general oeuvre.

Michael Cisco's The Narrator is another that comes to mind. An excellent book but hard to categorize. SF, yes, but it is of a highly different style than most - with much of Fantasy in it as well. So SFF? Why not simply Speculative? That shaves off one extraneous F and should keep purists from arguing that it's SF or F when it has elements of both.

Muhahahahahaha, see this is why I like the term speculative fiction; as Eric M. Edwards, mentions, The City & The City is pretty um, weird (I'm taking that from the Wikipedia page) and you know, not being entirely sure of whether it was sci-fi or fantasy was part of the charm for me, as I ended up reviewing it this month (and I also managed to attach the widget/image thing to the sidebar, yay for tardiness?) In any event I have reviewed something (probably horribly) and I enjoyed it and then posted about (in the first week of the month no less!), now I just need to find another book for next month.

I actually found this novel difficult to get through, which surprised me. I found the review even harder to get through at times.... I feel like I've been writing it forever.

The premise of the book is interesting, but it moves slowly. On top of that, I found an unusual number of typographical errors (which is something I didn't mention in the review). But like I say in the write-up, it would make a great mini-series.

I wondered as I finished my review whether The Fallen Blade *did* fit within Speculative Fiction, so I went back to Amanda's first post and reassured myself that, for the purposes of the challenge, it does. But I'd already classified it to myself as "alternative history" and if that's not speculative, I don't know what is. I have made a promise to myself, though, to try to read right across the genre for the challenge, with some real science fiction, and not just my usual diet of dark(ish) fantasy.

I remember watching an interview Denzel Washington gave on the Jonathans Ross Show a few years ago when he was plugging his new movie called Déjà-vu, which was about a Detective who travels back in time to prevent a terrorist attack, and even though Denzel was pushed and pushed by Jonathan, he wouldn’t say the word's science fiction in any way shape or form in the context of his film. I’m guessing that it’s because someone from marketing had made damn sure that he was told to keep his month firmly shut about those two words, because science fiction doesn’t sell and that irritated me. That is why I don't like the term speculative fiction, I don't regard is an “Umbrella Term” I regard it as a “Call it anything but bloody Science fiction and Fantasy” term and it annoyed me enough I decided to leave a comment and see that other people thought. To everyone who gave me there views and argued there point, I thank you, but l still feel that I don't want to be involved with the Spec Fiction challenge because of my reasons outlined above.

For me the term Speculative Fiction is used when a book or film doesn't fit into one particular genre, Star Wars is a good example, it has many fantasy elements and yet is created in a "science fiction" setting.

Regardless of the above it seems a little trivial to refuse to take part in a challenge due to the title, like saying you won't eat chocolate cause it's brown...

Completely separately, I was just wondering whether reviewing comics (or graphic novels, whatever) was an OK alternative to reviewing novels, which is what I believe was originally put up, but I think I remember seeing someone review a Sandman book last month, and I'd like to join in

@weirdmage I posted because I wanted some input, just to see if there was any argument that might persuade me that speculative title is anything other than marketing Bull***t and there wasn't one. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the fact that you went to the bother of replying to me, because I do. I can see where your coming from but it isn't enough to persude me from my point of view.